Conscious Manifestations - Portfolio

Free Language v2 Released

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 19:51:43 -0600

I am happy to announce the release of Free Language v2. Read the release announcement on Free Language.

This site is a major upgrade from v1, which was mostly just me putting language-learning resources together. The idea behind v2 is that a community will start to form that is interested in learning languages and letting people know about the best places online, methods and resources for this. Soon I will be integrating a voting aspect to the site.

For now it is possible to comment on the listing there, as well as find podcasts, blogs, links, websites and more resources for learning the following 12 languages:

For all the Drupalers out there, the site is running Drupal 4.7 and I used the following contributed modules:

aggregator2
captcha
emailpage
google analytics
insert_block
pathauto (to the max)
poormanscron
simplenews
sitemenu
tagadelic

I am going to upgrade to Drupal 5 as soon as I can get some funds together to commission the upgrade of aggregator2 to Drupal 5. Or perhaps someone will decide to just do it!

Here is a screenshot of the Mandarin Chinese Tags Page:

Mandarin Chinese Info v2

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 03:08:43 -0600

I just finished revamping Mandarin Chinese Info. I gave it a fresh look and restructured a lot of content to make it easy for users to upload content and tag it on the fly.

Of course, there aren't any users yet, because that is another thing that just changed! Hopefully, some people will try it out and make some posts about Mandarin Chinese, or at least comment anonymously.

Really, as always, it is up to the users to join and make it happen.

Here is a screenshot:

Launched Opal Myth Interest Management Experiment

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 03:31:18 -0600

I just launched Opal Myth.

From the site:

"This website is an experiment in an online method of organizing one's many interests and pursuits in one place using Drupal."

An interesting idea... Drupal is really quite versatile. I am interested to see how it works out.

The site makes heavy use of Drupal's native Aggregator module to manage feeds of interest.

Keeping it as simple as possible, the only extra modules used were:

poormanscron
pathauto
tagadelic
upload preview

Here is a screenshot:

Ayahuasca.info Release Announcement

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 16:13:14 -0600

I just launched another web project for Heart of the Initiate, the folks who do the ayahuasca healing retreats in Brazil.

This site consists mostly of web feeds about ayahuasca aggregated into Drupal using the aggregator2 modules.

Here is a screenshot:

Other modules used include:

tagadelic
sitemenu
pathauto
poormanscron
captsch

textimage

The theme is a basic theme based off of the foliage theme.

The site was built with Drupal 4.7.4.

Find out about ayahuasca!

WisdomWord V2

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 17:56:59 -0600

WisdomWord V2 was launched in September of 2006.

The clients main interests were:

Redesign based on existing layout
Podcasting
Tags
Search Engine Optimization
Multiple Blogs
easier navigability

The theming work was primarily done by iDonny at CMS Producer. The installation and configuration of Drupal was done here at Conscious Manifestations.

Several extra (non-core) Drupal modules were used in the making of this site, including:

audio (for podcasting)
event
image
janode (for links)
pathauto (automatic URL generation for SEO)
tagadelic

Extensive work was done to optimize the information architecture to best suit search engine placement.

Here is a screenshot of the new site:

Free Parkour V2

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 18:02:58 -0600

I finished the V2 version of Free Parkour!

It looks pretty nice.

Here is a screenshot:

Here is the announcement from the site:

I have just finished tweaking out a new Drupal theme called Warped for the needs of this site. It was oh so very pink until I got my hands on it. It is actually a very nice theme, all in all, and there was not very much I had to change, which is nice.

For the record, here is a screenshot of what the old theme looked like:

And there you have it folks, a nice change!

And more changes to come...

More to come, indeed. This puppy is just getting started.

Free Language Gets Upgrade, New Look

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 18:03:08 -0600

Free Language was recently upgraded to Drupal 4.7 - lots of new goodies come with that upgrade.

I also chose a new theme for the site... it is pretty much the default foliage theme, with just a change to the header.

There is a V2 release in the making, which will drastically upgrade the site on all levels, and enable much better categorization and location of desired information.

Here is a screenshot:

Look out for a big change coming soon...

Visit Free Language

SynthWise Gets a New Look and Feel, New Features

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 18:03:20 -0600

Here is a screenshot of the new SynthWise v2:

The rest is straight from the SynthWise blog:

Well... it has been a long one today. I just finished updating the theme for this site entirely. It used to be a drab, boring sort of default Drupal theme.

Now it is a nice spinoff of the gunmetal theme. I had to make a lot of tweaks to get it right, but now it is solid.

Just for posterity's sake, and archiving purposes, here is a screenshot of the old theme:

I think the new theme is more fitting for the genre of this site.

I will be working more frequently on this site once I get a few other of my websites revamped, including Free Language, Free Wiki and Free Music Software. These are all using the same basic theme that the old SynthWise theme was. Time for a change!

More to come soonish...

And also:

Forgot to mention the new features.

Basically, there are a few tweaks to the existing features, and then one new feature.

The tweaks involve the Drupal aggregator2 module. I had to switch some things around so that all incominf syndicated articles would be properly categorized.

The new feature is that now comments are open the the public! There is a captcha that is a simple addition problem which I hope will help control spam. I invite your comments!

That's most of the meat.